DethDearest
by Varia Lectio
Summary: Angélique Eluveitie is James Grishnack's abused and put-upon secretary. What happens when she encounters Dethklok and their tall, dark, and brooding frontman?


_**DethDearest**_

**Summary:** Angélique Eluveitie is James Grishnack's abused and put-upon secretary. What happens when she encounters Dethklok and their tall, dark, and brooding frontman?

**Rating:** Rated R, for rough language and some violence.

**Author's Notes:** Yup, here's some fuzzy het. I originally intended this to be a short, fluffy fic where the secretary sneaks aboard the Dethcopter during the _Blood Ocean_ premiere (how, you ask? How the hell should I know?), almost gets her head shot off (but is spared), and Nathan falls for her 'cause she's damned precious and she's abused. And that would be _literally_ all there was to it.

Well, "guitar chord" that.

It grew into a monster that featured the rest of the band arguing, chattering, picking the next director for _Blood Ocean_, and cockblocking Nathan (or attempting to do so). I gave (or tried to give) Angélique some sort of personality, rationality, and humanity, and explain why she stayed with her abusive boss and why she ends up with Nathan here. I also wanted to (hopefully) keep Nate in character, but also show a believable yet softer side to him. A mumbly, blushing side. A side that gives his best beloved little gifts like ice-beer-cream and plastic spoons. Stuff like that. I wanted to (at least hopefully) realistically portray at least some of the emotional trauma that someone being abused would go through, because I don't want to sugarcoat stuff like that and hate it when I see that in other writers' fics.

So... comments? Criticism? Thoughts? Hatred? Let me know.

_( / )_

Angélique was running again. Grishnack was demanding coffee, Duncan Hills Black, no sugar, no cream, and she had to fetch it. His coffee dispenser had conveniently broken, so he had ordered her to go and get some for him. "And be quick about it, girl," he had snarled, the fingers of his meaty hands flexing. _Be quick,_ his tone said, _and I won't hit you. Or at least I might decide not to hit you. _The key word being _**might**_.

Never had she thought that she would be living in fear, in constant dread, of such a little thing as the word 'might'.

So she hurried, hurried, hurried, her high-heeled feet clipping a fast pace down the halls and through the rooms, until she ended up in a large lounge area filled with plush couches and little end-tables...and coffee machines, all of them emblazoned with the Duncan Hills logo.

Only one thing could make her slow down, and that was the sight of Dethklok sharing the lounge area with the studio's suits and businesspeople. It was truly bizarre; in a sea of conservative, buttoned-down business suits and skirts, there were these four shaggy-haired men wearing grungy, dark t-shirts and faded jeans. The one with the puggish face and caterpillar mustache -- Murderface, she thought his name was -- was wearing a battered leather vest; the leggy blonde with the unpronounceable name wore a tarnished cast-iron emblem of a skull on his belt buckle. It was so strange and out of place that she couldn't help but smile just a little.

The smile vanished as she moved towards the nearest coffee machine and accidently slammed into a wall. A thick, muscular, slightly pudgy, slightly over six feet tall wall with long black hair.

She thumped to the floor, ass first. One of her high heeled shoes twisted off and spun away. _So that's where the fifth Dethklok member was,_ she thought fuzzily. I_ thought there was another one of them..._

"Hey, watch it," the wall of manflesh that was Nathan Explosion growled. She blinked up at him, still on her ass. He looked down, his head blocking the overhead lights. Black hair fell around his face and down his chest like a curtain. "Oh," he added, upon truly noticing her.

"You must be Nathan Explosion," she said, still sitting there. "Hello. I'm -- I'm sorry I ran into you."

"Oh," he said again. A pause. Then: "Are you crippled now?"

"No," she said, mystified by the absurd question.

"Because you haven't gotten up yet. I thought something-- uh, never mind. Here--" he reached down, offering a hand. She grasped it and was pulled smoothly to her feet by sheer Nathan Explosion muscle-power alone. _He's strong,_ she realized.

"I need coffee," she said as she wriggled her foot back into her shoe.

"You look like it," he said with a thin smirk. "Over here." He stood aside and gestured to the coffee machine she had been heading for when she ran into him.

She hastily poured Grishnack a pot of coffee. "Thank you," she said to Nathan. He was standing right beside her, watching her pour.

"Huh, yeah," he grunted. "Enjoy your coffee. Duncan Hills best, ya know."

_( / )_

_She hadn't ever thought things would be like this. _

_She had thought things would be relatively easy for her. Oh, she'd expected to work, and work hard, no doubt about that. She was trained for that, however; she was a swift and efficient worker, and she was expecting the normal stresses and challenges of the business end of the movie-making profession, especially when working for a high-powered movie executive like James Grishnack. _

_But she hadn't expected the abuse, the cruelty, the flagrant disregard for the dignity of any and all female staff around the man. He was a bastard, pure and simple. And he liked to hit people. Liked to hit her, especially. _

_During her first week on the job, he had struck her simply for offering him a friendly compliment. Not just one, but three times. Open palm, right on the cheek. Then he'd dismissed her to "go get Daddy a drink". And as she had scurried away to fetch him some wine, tears burning in her eyes just like the warm imprint of his hand burned on her stinging face, she had realized with a cold certainty that Grishnack had struck her on her face because he could. Simply that, and nothing more. He feared no censure, no consequences. He did not worry about her confessing, with either tears or rage, to someone else of what he'd done. He did not fret about her leaving and complaining to the authorities. He had struck her in a visible area of her body because he could do so and because he did not fear any repercussions from such an act. _

_She'd gotten Grishnack his wine. He had smiled at her humiliation, his piggy eyes noticing the unshed tears in her own, then he'd called her "a good little girl" with a sneer in his voice and dismissed her for lunch. _

_Angélique spent the lunch break in the bathroom, her mouth tasting of bile and her stomach twisted up in a tight little knot, too frightened to eat or even drink, tears running down her face._

_( / )_

The next time she met Nathan Explosion, it was during a meeting with the band's manager, Charles F. Ofdensen. Grishnack himself was starting to avoid meeting the band in person, though he was still taking Ofdensen's calls. "I can't stand being around those unwashed monosyllabic retards," he growled as he shoved a stack of papers in her hands. "Here, take that to their stuffed-suit of a manager and tell him what I want. And don't fuck up, Miss Eluveitie!" As she took the papers, she saw his meaty hands flex and bend the stack. His fat, heavy fingers were studded with rings today; she imagined them impacting on her flesh. Her stomach clenched, and she knew she would get no lunch today.

When she went to Ofdensen, her stomach was in a sour knot. The Dethklok manager was sitting at a desk, his bloodless, elegant hands steepled on a stack of papers. A gold-chased pen winked from his breast pocket. Dethklok was sitting around him, Nathan at Ofdensen's right, Pickles the Drummer at his left. They all stared at her when she came in, but it was Ofdensen's and Nathan's eyes on her that she felt the most. She fixed her mouth into a smile and tried not to throw up.

"Hey, I remember you," Nathan said loudly. Ofdensen laid a hand on the singer's forearm to quiet him.

Angélique faced them all with a smile and shook Ofdensen's hand. "I'm Angélique Eluveitie, Mr. Grishnack's secretary. Mr. Ofdensen, it's a pleasure to speak with you."

Ofdensen gave her a small, neat smile that did not warm his pale grey eyes. "The pleasure is mine, Miss Eluveitie. You have a beautiful name. Very... unusual." He raised up her hand and for a moment Angélique tensed in fear. But Ofdensen only kissed her knuckles very lightly, and then let her hand go. Angélique breathed out, and was painfully aware of how wide and frightened her eyes must look.

"Thank you--" she started to say before Nathan reached around Ofdensen, practically shoving the manager out of the way, grabbed her hand, shook it, and then clumsily kissed it himself, mashing her knuckles against his lips. She could feel his teeth against her skin, and when he let go and she pulled her hand back, there was a sheen of wet spit on it. Definitely Nathan's.

Everyone was frozen in place, staring at her and Nathan. Then Murderface began to snicker, and Nathan, not even looking at the bass player, smacked him so hard with a backhand that Murderface yelped like a dog. "What the fuck, Nate?" he spat, looking as if he would have punched Nathan if not for Toki physically restraining him.

"Just _shut up_ about it," Nathan said, his eyes darting back and forth, his cheeks looking rather red.

Ofdensen sighed. "Gentlemen, enough. Miss Eluveitie, I apologize for that." He shot the squabbling band members a glare that effectively silenced them. "It won't happen again."

Angélique nodded and then took her seat at the end of the table, directly opposite Ofdensen. "My purpose here today is to discuss the issue of a new director for the film. Since Mr. Nergal's unfortunate suicide, _Blood Ocean_ is left without a director. Mr. Grishnack and I have put together a list of possible replacements. Since this is, of course, your movie, we wanted you to have the final say in who should direct it." She passed around copies of the list to the band members, with Ofdensen of course getting a copy. She had the feeling that he would make the final decision about it, or would at the least strongly influence the band's decision.

As she looked around the room, she noticed that Nathan had slipped on a pair of reading glasses as he scanned the list. His mouth was pursed; a blunt black nail, its polish freshly applied and gleaming, slowly scratched at the dark stubble on his chin. He'd painted his nails but yet neglected to shave. She somehow found that funny, and actually rather cute. He looked like some sort of barbarian scholar, diligently studying the text of a civilization that was far beyond him.

Silence reigned for a time, then Nathan cleared his throat. It sounded like the world's biggest pit bull growling in his sleep. His next words slowly slid out of the growl like a crocodile surfacing from a swamp. "_Grrrrmmmnn_ I think we should get..." his finger whipped down from his chin and stabbed at the paper, thumping it hard, "this guy."

Murderface poked his puggy face over Nathan's forearm, squinted at the name. His head shot up and he yelped, "Damien Wylde? _Awesome!_ We gotta get him, Nate!" He looked pleadingly at Nathan, and crowed when Nathan solemnly nodded. "Fuckin' A!"

"Yeah, _Death Orgy VI: Return of the Death Dealer_ was great," Pickles said sagely, puffing on a doobie. "That scene at the end where the dude gets his eyes stabbed out..."

"Uh-huh..." Nathan's eyes had glazed over with happy remembrance.

Pickles nodded, puffing on the doobie, his voice picking up speed. "And -- and then he falls into the meat grinder and, uh--"

Murderface crowed and slammed his knife down into the table so hard that it was buried almost up to the hilt. "And then he getsh _packshaged--_"

"And then the hero and his family eat 'im?" Pickles took a long puff, exhaled, tipped his head back and squinted at the florescent overheads. "Damn, that was good."

Ofdensen gave a little cough, his eyes crinkled at the corners with distaste. His mouth was pursed in a tight moue. "Gentlemen, something like _Death Orgy VI_... is not the sort of thing we want associated with this project."

Murderface swung around, hand clutching his knife's hilt so tightly his knuckles were white. _"Whaaat?_ Fuck you! _Death Orgy_ washch _brilliant!_" He glared at Ofdensen, his mustache flecked with spittle. "Have you no _classch_, Charlesh? Have you no _shoul?_"

Ofdensen wasn't fazed. "That's...not really the issue here, Murderface."

Murderface's eyes gleamed dangerously, then he sniffed loudly, nose and chin tilted up in the air. Crossing his arms, he swung around and turned his back on his manager. "I _pity_ you," he proclaimed.

Angélique could have sworn that Ofdensen rolled his eyes just a little at this, but the manager's face had such a still, serene quality to that she couldn't be sure. "Nevertheless," he said calmly after a short silence that conveyed perfectly just what he thought of Murderface's opinion, "I feel very strongly that Damien Wylde should not be attached to this project." His tone brooked no argument.

Nathan looked sulky, long hair hanging over his face.

"I don't know you," Murderface said primly.

Pickles sighed in temporary defeat, then his eyes lit up, along with another joint. "Hey, what about this guy? J.F. Amarth?" He laughed. "When I was a kid, and I was home from school 'cause I was sick, or pretendin' t' be sick, I'd watch his old Western movies. They were pretty good, y'know. Uh, let's see... _Fistful of Bullets, Ugly Nameless Man, Return of the Ugly Nameless Man_... Yeah, good stuff." He pointed at Toki. "And you play a cowboy, Toki, I'm sure he'd like that."

"Yous think, Pickle?" Toki chirped. "Wowee!"

"Didn't one of those films have someone forced to eat his own ear or something?" Nathan asked, snapping out of his mood. "Yeah, that's brutal," he said as Pickles nodded. "Let's hire him." He grinned a rather mean and toothy grin and swung around to Ofdensen, hair swaying sleekly with the motion. "You got a problem with that?"

"Mr. Amarth would be a very good addition to this project," Ofdensen said. "He has an impeccable reputation."

"You don't have to make your decision today," Angélique said, "Mr. Grishnack just wants all the options considered."

"I believe we'll go with J.F. Amarth," Charles said, in a tone of finality.

_( / )_

Mr. Amarth's tragic and painful accident involving a forklift a week into his term as _Blood Ocean_'s director delayed the project for a couple more months. Ofdensen had the man stabilized at a local L.A. hospital before flying him over to Mordhaus in a Dethcopter. "Saint En's has some of the best health care in the world there," he assured her and Grishnack. "Mr. Amarth will be treated like family."

Grishnack's puffy face turned red at that, his green eyes almost seeming to glow with fury, but he chomped down on his cigar and smiled a vicious smile. "Hmm, I should hope so, Mr. Ofdensen. Otherwise you'll be looking for another director. Won't you?" He puffed a cloud of acrid smoke in Ofdensen's face.

And what Ofdensen did next made Angélique like him, just a little. He didn't blink, didn't cough, didn't do anything. He just sat there and then he smiled slightly. "Mr. Amarth will be fine," he replied. And that was that.

When Ofdensen left, Grishnack turned on her. Angélique would never know if some expression that she hadn't hidden well enough had come out on her face, or if Grishnack was just frustrated and wanted to take it out on her.

The next thing she knew, the door had closed behind Ofdensen and Grishnack's hand was in her hair, wrenching her around and holding her there as his hand slapped her across the face -- once, twice, thrice, rapid succession, like gunshots. She screamed, half-hoping Ofdensen would hear her and come back, but no one came, even if they did hear. No one would help her.

Grishnack beat her until he grew tired of the game, then opened his huge fist and dropped her unceremoniously to the floor. She curled up in a ball, shaking, crying, blood running from her nose, her lips, the cut that burned on her bruised cheek where the ring on his hand had split the skin. Her whole face was a mass of pain and as she lay there, curled up and shaking so badly that she could hear her body vibrating against the hard, knubbly carpet, she knew that Grishnack wasn't finished, that he'd only pick her up and start again... or maybe he'd kick her, or...

"Get out," Grishnack said hoarsely. "Get out of my office, you slut."

The worst thing of it was that she couldn't even feel relieved as she pushed herself up off the floor and staggered to her feet. She felt nothing but a hollow, gnawing fear, and shame that this was what she had been reduced to.

She cleaned herself up in the ladies' room and then wandered down the halls. Everyone else had left for the evening, which was good. She found herself wanting to hide from the world.

She ended up accidentally staggering into the lounge area where she had first met Nathan... and met Nathan. Again. Only the rest of Dethklok was there this time, minus Ofdensen.

The smell of beer and pot and TV dinners managed to reach her even through the plugs of blood in her broken nose. Pickles was smoking a joint and lighting another one for Toki, Murderface was using his knife to poke holes in the cellophane covering of a dinner, and Skwisgaar was fingering the frets of his guitar with one hand and eating with the other.

And Nathan...well, she didn't understand what he was doing at first, but when she studied him a little more she understood it. In front of his legs, resting up against his knees, was a large cooler. He had a gallon-bucket of ice cream on his lap and a six-pack of beer tucked beside him on the couch, and was pouring the contents of a bottle into the gallon of ice cream.

At the sound of her footsteps, Pickles was the first to look up and see her. His joint's lit end traced a burning line in the smoky air as he waved languidly. "Hey babe."

Nathan's head jerked up. "Oh! Hey... damn." He darted a quick look at Angélique, then turned his attentions intensely to the gallon of beer and ice cream on his lap. Then he slowly looked up and dared to stare at her even more, hair hanging over his reddened face. His mouth dropped open.

"What the hell?" he bellowed so loudly that the ice cream bucket wobbled and sloshed beer and cream onto his knees, and would have fallen to the floor had Nathan not grabbed it in time.

"Misses Elly-ways, yous face is alls bloodies," Toki said softly, looking very disturbed.

"_Ja,_ likes you runs into the walls or somethinks," Skwisgaar said, not sounding like he cared and not bothering to look up. He inhaled deeply of the pot-smoke and then busily stuffed braised roast chicken with Italian herbs and spices into his mouth. Grease dripped down onto his black sleeveless shirt. "Yous nots that clumsies, eh?"

Toki, in contrast, was looking steadily more and more worried. "Did yous parent beat yous?" His voice was squeaky with anxiety.

Angélique shook her head. The motion only made her face hurt worse. She pulled down some loose hair over her face with a hand, suddenly wanting nothing more than to disappear, preferably forever. What was she even doing here in the same room with them? She was an alien to their world. She didn't even really like heavy metal, aside from having been something of a Snakes 'n' Barrels fan when she had been a kid. But that had been a long time ago; she wasn't that person anymore. She didn't even know who she was anymore, other than a person who was too much of a coward to stop her own abuse, day after day...

She turned to just go and walk out of there, but the next thing she knew, Nathan was skidding across the floor, black boot soles squealing on spilled beer, melted ice cream globs, and discarded cellophane wrappings and joints. She only saw all this out of the corner of her eye, so the overall impression was of a very large, thick-bodied creature that was comprised mainly of stained, sweaty dark t-shirt, faded denim, and long sleek black hair flying towards her on a wave of scattered trash. His massive forearm, rank with sweat and bristling with black hair, went around her shoulders in a very rough hug as he both restrained her and used to her to brake his momentum. There was another sharp squeal as Nathan managed to skid to a halt, heels scraping the floor.

A beat. Perfect silence. Not even the sharp popping sounds of Murderface poking his dinner's packaging intruded on the quiet. She shivered in Nathan's grasp, not because she was being held very, very close to the body of a man that she did admittedly find moderately attractive, despite the aura of strange destruction that clung to the band like stink to a skunk, but because Grishnack's abuse of her had robbed her of the ability to feel anything other than fear and uncertainty where an unfamiliar man was concerned. She realized what Grishnack had taken from her and she wanted to weep for it, but she was too frightened and too embarrassed to do so.

"Don't go. Your face..." he mumbled, so low she could feel it against her skin. His voice seemed to originate from some point deep within his chest or belly and rattle through a throat that sounded like he swallowed broken glass for breakfast.

A large, black-nailed finger tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, lightly touched the crusted blood cupped in the whorls of her ear cartilage. _Dammit,_ she thought, humiliated, _I forgot to wash there._

"Your face is fucked up," he said, starting to sound angry, but still speaking in the same soft, low, growling voice as before.

And suddenly she was afraid Nathan would hit her, just because she wasn't pretty. Grishnack did that sometimes when something about her hair, makeup, or clothing failed to meet his standards of feminine attractiveness. He would hit her until she cried, and then order her to go and fix "whatever needs fixing". She would end up hunched over the bathroom sink or in the stall, sometimes for hours, stomach churning, washing away the blood and tears, desperately scrutinizing her face and clothing for any little flaw. It had gotten to the point where she couldn't see anything _except_ potential flaws, and every one of them made her gorge rise into her throat and her heart clench with terror.

Hating herself for it, but so terrified that the words spilled out involuntarily, she began to beg, "Please, please let me go, please... Don't hurt me, don't hit me, please..."

"Nate, I think yer scaring the fuck outta her," Pickles commented from behind a cloud of smoke. "Not that I blame ya, babe," he added mildly, "he's pretty scary sometimes."

Nathan relaxed his grip. "Calm down; I'm not gonna hit you, what the fuck are you talkin' about? You're safe. Well, safe from... from whoever was hitting you... because they're -- they're not here right now. I think." He darted quick glances around the lounge, just to make sure.

Angélique bit her lip and closed her mouth, trying to will her body to calm down. She went limp and Nathan hauled her over to the couch and sat her down. He plopped down beside her and the couch sagged noticeably under his weight, with everything on it -- herself, Pickles, the six-pack of beer that was really now more like a five-pack, the sloshy, beery ice-cream -- sliding towards Nathan's sides. She thumped against his flank. He looked down at her, almost shyly. "Now, who -- who did that?"

Again, Angélique felt the fear coming back, the fear that she could tell no one of what Grishnack did to her; the even worse fear that even if she were to tell, no one would care. It was as if she was both invisible to everyone (certainly her bruises were invisible to the rest of Grishnack's staff, as they never commented on them) and horribly visible, as if she was stripped naked in front of these strange, brutal men whom she barely knew.

Nathan stared down at her and then looked down at his hands, wet and sticky with beer and ice-cream. He was frowning; if she dared to turn her head just a little she could see the downward pull of his thin lips, just a hint of teeth showing, behind the tangled, tossed curtain of ruffled black hair. That just made her feel frightened all over again.

Nathan cracked his knuckles, then said in a tone of finality, "Pickles, Toki, Skwisgaar, Murderface -- clear out." He picked up his melty-ice-cream-and-beer-in-a-bucket and popped it into the cooler and thumped the lid shut with his foot.

"Nate, I'm eatin'," Murderface whined around a mouthful of food.

"Sos I -- etting. You knows, th' dinner TVs," Skwisgaar said, the fingers of his right hand bouncing off the guitar strings. He had one last chunk of chicken between his back molars and was vigorously masticating it into mush even as he spoke. "Why shoulds _we_--"

"_I said to clear the fuck __**OUUUUUT!**_" Nathan bellowed. Everyone jumped and cursed half-heartedly at Nathan and then headed for the exit at a swift trot, stubbing out joints and tossing away paper trays as they went.

Angélique and Nathan were alone. Again, there was silence.

Nathan finally nudged the cooler with a knee. "Ummm... you ever... you ever have ice-beer-cream?" He coughed, face reddening slightly as she looked up at him.

She shook her head. He bent and opened the cooler, took out the gallon-bucket of ice-cream and beer. It was a bit colder but still pretty sludgy.

"It's coffee-flavored, Duncan Hills. Pretty good shit. See?" He turned the bucket so she could see the label on the side. "'Endorsed by Dethklok'. And the beer just makes it taste better. Also, you can get drunk on it. Drunk on ice-cream, that is. That's... that's pretty awesome." He unwrapped a plastic spoon and handed it to her in an awkwardly delicate fashion, like how a little boy might hand a homemade Valentine or a bouquet of roadside flowers to his grade-school beloved. "Want some?"

She took the spoon. He unwrapped one for himself, and let her take the first bite.

"It's..." She found herself not knowing what to say but feeling like crying anyway. "It's great. Thank you, Nathan."

They ate in silence. Nathan cracked open a fresh beer and gave some to her, then drank the rest.

"It was Grishnack."

Nathan looked up from where he had been studying the swirls of beer in the coffee-flavored ice-cream. "Huh?" It was a gentle "Huh?", however, and that gave Angélique some hope.

"He did this to me. He beats me." She sniffled thickly, blood clogging her nose. "He beat me tonight, so badly. And I don't even know why."

He snorted softly. "'Cause he's an asshole, that's why." There was a hiss as he popped the top off his second beer for the night.

She nodded.

"Why don't you... why don't you just quit?"

Her now-full stomach clenched unpleasantly, but she managed to keep the beer and ice-cream down. _Be strong,_ she told herself. _Stand up for yourself, now._ "I'm afraid," she admitted. "Grishnack is the most powerful man in Hollywood today -- if I leave or complain or if he fires me, I'll never work here again, not so long as he's alive. Hell, I don't even know if I could get a job anywhere else. He'd make sure I couldn't find work." But as soon as she said that, she wondered. That was what Grishnack had told her -- had threatened her with. But was it true? Or had she simply given into her own fears, allowed herself to become cowed by him, and not stood up for herself when she should? The more she thought of it, the more angry she became -- at herself and at Grishnack.

"He's just a fat bastard. If I punched him in the face, it'd probably kill him." Nathan snorted like a horse and clenched his hands into fists. "Like, his skull would shatter and his brains would come out, or he'd fall over and crack his head open that way, or maybe he'd just have a heart attack right there, you know? It'd be brutal... and he'd deserve it. Anyone who hits a woman is a fuckin' ball-less pussy." He then studied his hands in silence, as if amazed that he'd spoken so much.

"Thank you, Nathan."

He swigged some more beer and belched expansively. "Y'welcome. And -- y'know, you're -- excuse me." He drained the rest of the beer and then grabbed another one, opened it, and chugged it in several long gulps. "I needed that." He was now quite drunk. "But what I'm tryin' t'say is, Angie, you're really, really, really--" he belched again, and blushed-- "hot. And I like you, and would really like to... y'know."

"Oh. Well, thank you, but I'm not ready for anything tonight."

He clumsily patted her back. "It's okay. Have s'more ice-beer-cream." She did.

When they had finished the ice-beer-cream, Nathan handed her a little plastic card. It was black and had an image of a demonic, horned skull and the Dethklok logo on one side. On the other was a little black bar, like on a credit card.

"Take that," he told her, breath reeking coldly of beer, "When we're at the... y'know, the thingy for the movie, the big thingy, you go and get on the Dethcopter. With that, you can go wherever the hell you want, and Grishnack will have to just go fuck himself. 'Cause what is he supposed to do? We're fuckin' Dethklok; you can be our secretary if you want. And I won't hit you, either."

Angélique smiled, and took the card and put it safely in her purse. She felt safe. She had somewhere to go, and she was going to take the chance and leave Grishnack behind forever. "Thank you, Nathan." She decided to take a chance, and leaned against him a little... which wasn't all that difficult because as heavy as he was, she was kind of leaning towards him already. He gave the crown of her head a sticky, sloppy kiss.

"I rather like you too," she finally whispered. "You look..." she took a deep breath, "you look cute with glasses on."

He fished out his glasses from a hip pocket and shoved them on his face, crookedly, with one of the side hooks dangling off his ear. She fixed it for him.

He tipped back the last of the beer. "I'd drive you home in the Murdercycle but I... I s'riously don't know if I c'n stand up. That's some good beer." He blinked at the label. "Shit."

"It's okay, I'll just take public transportation." She stood up, a little wobbly. She was a bit drunk but was in far better shape than Nathan, who laid down and rested a hand over his stomach as soon as she vacated the couch. He gave her a rather sickly wave as she turned to go home for the night.

On impulse, she leaned down and kissed his brow, and tried with fumbling fingers to tuck his cowlick back behind one ear, just as he had done for her. Kissing him was uncomfortable because of her broken lip, but when she straightened up, he was grinning.

"Go 'way or you'll give me a hard-on," he said.

"Okay." She turned and walked out, still smiling through her sudden tears.

"Oh!" he said behind her. "An' tell those other dickfaces they c'n come back in again!"

_( / )_

After J. F. Amarth's miraculous recovery (sans a biological organ or two, though Charles Ofdensen graciously made arrangements for bio-synthetic replacements to be made available at Dethklok's expense) and return to the director's chair, _Blood Ocean_ actually started to move along... well, swimmingly. Grishnack, perhaps out of a fit of cheerfulness, began to more or less ignore Angélique, and gradually the fear that his looming presence had engendered in her began to fade. She was still cautious around him, but since she was less afraid, her work for Grishnack became more efficient. She was quicker at her tasks, and worked longer and harder. Grishnack, of course, never praised her, but she knew that he noticed that her performance had improved. Much to Angélique's joy, her employer left her for the most part in peace.

When finally at home and resting from work, Angélique would sit on her couch and listen to classical music, the Dethklok security pass-card clutched in one hand, idly turning it back and forth, thinking about what Nathan had told her. Contact with him became less frequent as the two worked harder at their respective jobs, but she thought of him often -- about the beer-cream, about their awkward, alcohol-fueled, painfully honest conversation, about his arm around her shoulder, his hand on her ear, his breath on her skin, his sticky lips on her forehead. The odd, shy way he would look at her through his hair, as if he had difficulty in expressing himself in front of her. It was odd -- and oddly endearing -- in a man who had probably had more sexual partners than she had ever had meals. She knew, of course, about "Natebecca", and about Rebecca Nightrod's terrible accident and subsequent coma, and wondered sometimes how that would affect her relationship with Nathan... if there was even anything that could be called a relationship there.

In the end, she decided that she would go with Dethklok when the chance presented itself, but that she would keep things with Nathan strictly professional. After all, she would technically be his employee, if she were to take him up on his offer and become a secretary for the band.

But at times it was hard to remember anything of that dowdy pledge; at times all she could think about was his hand on her ear, gently tracing the whorls of it, and his breath on her skin, smelling sweetly of sugar and fine beer. And so in the evenings she would always mark another day off her calendar. Another day closer to the premiere of _Blood Ocean._

_( / )_

Angélique could hear Grishnack growling at Dethklok. The show was over and the members of Dethklok were all in a tight huddle around Grishnack -- probably threatening him to keep _Blood Ocean_ from coming out. She noted the tension in Nathan's back, the aggression in the stance of every Dethklok member except the young, brown-haired Toki. After months of working for Grishnack, Angélique had a keen appreciation and grasp of the body language of an enraged man.

Glancing back once at Grishnack's bald head, which was steadily reddening and beaded with sweat, Angélique slipped out of the projection room and down into the milling crowd, moving steadily out. Dethklok would be walking down the red carpet soon and she needed to get onto the Dethcopter. She avoided the spotlight, not wanting Grishnack to see her in case he noticed she was missing. This whole plan felt like the bravest thing she had done in years.

The evening air smelled of sea salt, sweat, perfume... and Grishnack's foul cigars. A man's hand, large and sweaty and painfully strong, gripped her hard by her upper arm. She screamed, but her voice was lost in the prattle of the stifling crowd.

"Where d'you think you're going, Miss Eluveitie?" Grishnack's hot breath was foul with cigar smoke, wine, and rotten teeth. He leaned down into her face, his own bloated, sagging visage red and puffed with rage. "Sneaking off, hmmm?" He struck her, quick and hard. The blow rocked her back on her high heels, and she would have fallen except for his grasp on her.

Grishnack raised his hand to strike her again, but the blow was late in coming, probably because he wanted to savor the moment of punishing his secretary, and she took the opportunity to slam her high heel into his ankle, goring his shin hard. Grishnack bellowed like a bull and dropped her to the floor.

Angélique squirmed away from him, slithering on her hands and knees, and scrambled up out of the press of the crowd. Some unknowing person stamped on one of her hands, but she hardly felt it. She kicked off her high heels. The pain in her hand only spurred her to move faster, away from Grishnack, away as quickly as she could.

She went for the elevator for the Dethcopter's raised landing pad. There were four masked Klokateers there at the elevator door, still as statues but carrying an aura of deadly watchfulness. Rifles were slung across each man's chest; each man had a short gladius-like sword sheathed at one hip, a pistol strapped at the other. The hilts of knives jutted up from the tops of their boots. Throwing stars winked from their chests like war medals. These guys were armed to the teeth and they didn't fuck around. In one of his last conversations with her, Nathan had warned her in a roundabout way about how dangerous the Klokateers were. "Show 'em your pass as soon as you can. And come out with your hands and your pass up," had been his exact words.

Sure enough, when they saw her, those rifle barrels pointed her way. "Halt and show us your security clearance," one of the men snapped. "Or we're authorized to use deadly force."

She put up her hands and showed them her pass. Her fingers were shaking, but instead she somehow felt calm. _I'm free, I'm free. _She could taste blood in her mouth, her stockings were ripped, and her clothing was in disarray, and she was fairly certain that some of the fingers on her left hand were broken, but that didn't matter. She was free.

The guard took her card and ran it through a little device he wore on his belt like a fanny pack. It gave off a high, sweet-sounding guitar chord. Angélique wondered whether it was Toki or Skwisgaar who had recorded that little sound, then the guard said, "Go on; you're free to board the elevator."

Angélique rode the elevator up to the Dethcopter's landing pad with the guards and walked across the landing pad to the Dethcopter's main hatch. It hissed open at their approach like the maw of a hungry dragon. _This is it,_ she thought. The end of her old life and the start of a new one.

As she stepped into the Dethcopter's flip-down boarding stairs, up to the open hatch, one of the guards muttered, "How the hell did she get a pass card?"

"Probably a blow j--"

A hand reached out from inside the Dethcopter and pulled her aboard. Nathan Explosion. The Klokateers fell instantly silent and waited outside the Dethcopter as Angélique settled herself. She realized they were waiting for Nathan to give them permission to board.

Nathan was silent, his mouth fixed in a hard line. The Klokateers bowed their heads, and Angélique realized two things: one, Nathan had heard them talking, and two, he was angry enough to consider not letting them back on the Dethcopter at all.

"Nathan," she said softly, "we have to go, you have to let them on."

He growled. The Klokateers knelt as one. One man offered Nathan his sword, silently; another, his rifle. _Take our lives,_ the gestures clearly said,_ we offer them to you._ Nathan grabbed the sword out of the man's hands without a word. Both his scowl and his growl deepened.

_This is wrong,_ she thought desperately. Yes, they had insulted her, but she was used to far worse insults to her person, and besides, oral sex or offers of the same was probably how a lot of pretty young women got to see Dethklok up close and personal.

"Please, Nathan," she began in as calm a voice as she could manage, "I know they insulted me, but I'm fine with that. It doesn't matter to me. Please just let them go and get on here."

Nathan didn't turn his head to her, but a single green eye, framed with loose strands of long, black hair, rolled back in its socket to look at her. The skin of the eye's lids tightened and wrinkled as Nathan considered the request. Then he bowed his head and breathed out with surprising softness. From deeper inside the Dethcopter, Angélique began to notice the sounds of voices chattering over intercoms, the beeping of machinery, the grinding, grinding, grinding of massive gears and chains and the roaring of the engine that put even Nathan's growl to shame.

"You can keep your lives, your jobs, and your tongues," Nathan finally snarled. He shoved the hilt of the sword into the open palm of the guard who had offered it to him, and then stepped aside. "Now get on this damn 'copter and keep your fuckin' filthy mouths shut, you assholes. _Dismissed!_" The guards, their hooded heads bowed in shame, slunk onto the Dethcopter like whipped dogs and quickly disappeared from view.

The hatch closed behind them and Angélique felt a jolt beneath her feet as the Dethcopter began to pull up into the air. She turned to Nathan. "Please, don't hurt them or punish them," she began, but Nathan growled.

"They insulted you! They said you were some fucking fantwat slut!" he said, voice cracking with an anger that she realized was bizarrely chivalrous. He was actually offended on her behalf. The thought would have been touching if she hadn't been so disturbed by the deadly seriousness of what had just played out before her.

"Charles kissed your hand like you were a lady," he continued, "and I did too, and those _dickheads_--"

"Nathan, in all honesty I've had worse happen." Her tongue touched the swollen inside of her lip; tasted the blood there. A small, fearful part of her was amazed and yammering inside at the fact that she was talking back so freely to this large, strong, very angry man. For a moment the shadow of Grishnack threatened to crawl back over her heart. But then she stood firm, and pushed back the fear. "I've _felt_ much worse. Trust me on this. Please."

He tossed his head, looking both resigned and resentful. "Go get yourself cleaned up at th' hospital level, then." He cupped her unbruised cheek. "Bastard hit you for the last time." Then he turned and stalked away, shoulders hunched with residual anger.

Angélique turned and wandered off. The interior of the Dethcopter was a fascinating mystery to her; she had never imagined that something this large, this heavy, this _solid_, could fly. Yes, planes were huge, but this was beyond any airliner; it was unlike anything she'd ever seen before.

She accidently bumped into a little, shrunken, pale man in a white overcoat. "Oh, excuse me!" Then she gasped with fright as the man straightened up and turned her way, a shaft of warm orange-yellow light falling across his face. His very, very ugly, scarred, mutilated face.

Chipped teeth jutted out from his twisted mouth like ivory daggers as the man gaped at her. One eye was squinted and seamed with scars all around it, making it look small; the other was wide and bulging, staring at her.

"Oh, _mademoiselle_!" the horror said, speaking English with a distinctly French accent. "Please do not be alarmed! I am Jean-Pierre, chef for Dethklok. I was on my way to the infirmary, but I have a few minutes to spare. What is your name?"

"An -- Angélique." She swallowed hard. Despite his horrific appearance, there was something pathetic and gentle and harmless about the man. "I'm on my way there, too. Maybe you could show me the way?"

"Of course, of course." Drool ran from his mouth; he licked it back up with a too-long tongue.

She noticed that in one hand he was carrying a little baggie filled with ice. "What's that?"

"Oh, just my little pinkie finger. I accidently cut it off while chopping some carrots." He smiled at her gently. "It hurts, yes, but I'm going to get it sewn back on. Accidents happen, yes they do..."

So together they walked, she with her hand trailing against the wall, he limping on uneven bandy legs, until the Dethcopter shuddered from tail to nose and they sagged against each other for support like flexible trees in a high wind, swaying with the motion of the great air-ship.

Angélique looked up and around. "What was that?"

Jean-Pierre sucked at his front teeth. "I don't know."

Then they kept walking, while, utterly unbeknownst to the both of them, the members of Dethklok watched from a wide window as the _Blood Ocean_ premiere's oil rig theater roared up in flames. Angélique had no way of knowing it, but as she and the mangled French chef sat side by side in the ER room, Jean-Pierre busily telling her funny stories about France while the doctor cleaned and stitched her cuts and set her broken fingers, down below Grishnack's skin was boiling off his face, the flesh melting like butter from the heat alone.

She would not have liked it if she had known. She hated Grishnack, and slamming her heel into his foot had felt viciously good at that moment, but by nature she was not a violent person, and the loss of life going on down on the oil rig would have saddened her too much. So she remained ignorant of the cause of that shuddering thump, and instead told Jean-Pierre how she had ended up on the Dethcopter as he, in turn, got his finger sewn back on.

When she finished, he had tears in both his eyes, the little squinty one _and_ the big bulgy one. "Nathan Explosion is a good man, to do that."

She nodded, feeling like she could drift off to sleep right in that hospital. And in fact, she did, when the nurses led her to a spare bed. "He is. A good man, I mean. Goodnight, Jean-Pierre."

"_Au revoir, mademoiselle_. I am needed back in the kitchen; to direct, if not to chop." He winked his big eye at her, then turned and limped away.

The hooded nurses got her undressed, wiped the sweat and grime off her with warm, wet sponges, and dressed her in a soft nightgown that laced up the back. Then they put her to bed. The last thing she heard was the soft chime of an intercom and the announcement that the Dethcopter would be touching down at Mordhaus some time in the early morning. "Get up early and you could watch the sunrise over the Rockies as we approach Mordland!" the voice chattered.

"Yeah," she said with a yawn, all capabilities of thought leaving her, with speech faculties following close on their heels. Then, the lights were snapped off except for her bed's demon night-light, and she fell asleep just as quickly as the shutting off of the lights.

_( / )_

The next morning, the sky ahead of them was ablaze with color. Red, gold, orange, pink, and a light lilac-violet saturated the sky and the banks of fluffy clouds. Even the snow capping the jagged Rockies was painted pink and gold.

Nathan Explosion was currently the only one really watching it. Ofdensen, he supposed, would probably be somewhere working on some important form or business plan. Toki liked sleeping in whenever he could, so he was still in bed. Murderface had gotten drunk over despairing that he had ever showed his face in _Blood Ocean_ (Nathan remembered how Murderface had kept asking them if he had been "more fat, or more stupid!" and had taken a drink with every repetition of the words "fat" and "stupid"), and so was now sleeping off a hang-over. Pickles was also probably suffering from a hang-over, because that was how he dealt with the stress of seeing something as uniquely shitty as _Blood Ocean_.

The only other one of them who was present (in body if not in mind) was Skwisgaar, who was sitting propped up at the opposite end of the lounge/viewing room's long, low couch. Skwisgaar, too, had drunk copiously last night, and was currently fingering his guitar in a spastic, poisoned sort of way, his legs twitching like a dog's as he dozed. A line of drool, sticky and half-dried, ran from one corner of his lolling mouth. Nathan ignored Skwisgaar, and let the soft plinking of the guitar strings and the Swede's light snoring become one with the greater sounds of the Dethcopter.

He was actually enjoying this. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone else, but the view was brutally beautiful. His thoughts went back to the burning oil rig last night. Beautiful, too, but even more brutal. He wondered idly what had happened to that fat fuck, Grishnack. Now there was one fucker he wouldn't mind seeing toasted.

There was a soft swishing sound from the room's open doorway; Nathan looked up. There stood Angélique, dressed in the weirdest patchwork outfit he had ever seen on another human being, and with Dethklok that was really saying something. She was wearing a pair of fuzzy drawstring pajama pants that were light ice-blue and had little Deddybears printed on them in a darker blue -- definitely Toki's. They were too loose in the crotch and the legs looked awkwardly sloppy on her. A stained green t-shirt that read "Kiss me, I'm Irish... American" served as her top -- that had to be Pickle's. Her loose blonde hair was topped by an old Tampa Bay Buccaneers cap of Nathan's that he hadn't seen for ages. And over all this, she was wearing an ancient threadbare navy-blue housecoat that, judging by the monogrammed "C.F.O." over the right breast pocket, had to have belonged to Ofdensen at some point, years ago.

She stepped forward gingerly, with a weird sort of sloshing shuffle, and he looked down and saw an oversized pair of fuzzy white slippers (well, not so white anymore, as they were very old and stained) that might have once been Skwsigaar's. He liked white, after all.

Nathan blinked. _It looks like she just fucked the whole band, woke up, and threw some of their clothes on. And the manager. Except for Murderface._ He was actually very relieved by the fact that she wasn't wearing a stitch of anything belonging to Murderface; that would have just been too gross, for both her and him. He then realized that she must have gotten the stuff out of the infirmary's clean laundry basket, which made sense.

She was still pretty, though, despite the horrible outfit, despite the medical tape on her cuts and fading bruises on her face. He tried to ignore his rapidly thumping heart and, after working a little extra saliva into his mouth, croaked out, "Hey, you."

She waved, shuffled over, thumped down beside him. Skwisgaar, at the other end, flinched, groaned, then resumed his thin, dry snoring, and continued to play faster than before.

There was silence for a time, then he said, "The oil rig burned last night. Musta been an accident down there or something."

She gasped. "No! All those people..."

He realized that she wasn't happy about it. _Weird,_ he thought. "Yeah. And Grishnack, too, y'know, so it's not a total loss." He snorted at the thought, but she still didn't look happy.

"Well, at least I'm free." She knotted her hands in her lap. "Thank you, Nathan."

He looked at her, then decided to put an arm around her shoulders. "Yeah."

They were going over the mountains, coming to the scarred quarry-pits where Dethklok employees mined stone and metal for any repairs to Mordhaus. The pits would be silent and empty today, though; all the employees were having a week-long holiday in honor of the release of _Blood Ocean_, and Nathan saw no reason to call the holiday off just because that piece of crap had burned to ashes. After all, it meant that he didn't have to do any work, either.

Down far below, celebrations were going on in the various tent camps, wooden cottage towns, and pre-fab villages that had sprung up around Mordland over the years. They were now filled to capacity with Dethklok fans, groupies, employees and their families; even at this height he could see banners waving and lights blinking. Nathan wondered if they were watching a pirated copy of _Blood Ocean_, and groaned at the thought. Well, if you could get anything over the Internet...

Angélique was silent beside him... until they reached Mordhaus. She gasped; he grinned. The massive dragon's head reared up into the morning sky, blazing red and gold highlights shining off its sinuous curves, its eyes and open mouth smoking. In the light of the rising sun, it really did look almost real.

"Hey, Skwisgaar," he said, grinning evilly. "Look, a dragon!"

Skwisgaar's long legs jerked out straight in front of him and he sat up with a snort. "Ho! Dragons? Where's dragons?" Then he blinked at Mordhaus and glared at Nathan. "Is _home_, yous blind dummies." His head dropped back with a thump and a swish of tangled blond hair. "Idiots," he muttered, and closed his eyes again.

Jean-Pierre hustled in, swinging from side to side on his bandy legs. On his good hand he was balancing a tall stack of pancakes dripping with melty butter and syrup. "_Monsieur_ Explosion! _Mademoiselle!_" He swung around and looked at Skwisgaar, frowning slightly. "_Monsieur_ Skwigelf has not told me if he wants pancakes or not."

"It's okay, Jean-Pierre, just let 'im sleep," Nathan said, looking at the pancakes hungrily. "Um, mine?"

"Oh, yes, _monsieur_." Jean-Pierre handed the pancakes off to Nathan, who promptly stabbed into them with a fork. "And for you?" he asked, turning to Angélique.

"Um, I'd like some fresh fruit. Strawberries, if you have them."

"And you can have some of these, y'know," Nathan suddenly offered. When she looked at him, he blushed slightly -- or perhaps it was just a trick of the light. "They're... fluffy. And delicious. Syrupy, too. Mmm." He hacked at one of them with his fork and then stuffed a huge bite in his mouth, butter dripping down his stubbled chin. Angélique took a second fork and took a much smaller bite for herself, adding in some fresh strawberries when Jean-Pierre brought them.

They sat there together, silent, watching as Mordhaus grew bigger and bigger, gulping a little as the Dethcopter dropped altitude. Just enjoying the moment (and the pancakes). Light shone and glimmered off the tall spires and covered bridges and high, spiked merlons, flickering red and orange and pink off the stonework. The whole fortress seemed to be on fire with the morning light.

The shudder of the Dethcopter touching down, neat as a pin, on the landing pad could be felt through the couch and traveled through Nathan's body like an electric shock. There was a thunderous, grating clang of metal on concrete. Beside him, Angélique flinched slightly. Skwisgaar tipped forward in a shower of blond hair and smelly clothes and fell bonelessly onto his stomach, yelping in surprise as he hit the cold floor.

Nathan found himself grinning. Life could not be better. He was rid of Grishnack, rid of _Blood Ocean_, he'd had pancakes for breakfast, he was back home, and he had a girl with him, too. A pretty girl -- not as stunningly beautiful as ice-cold Rebecca had been before her intimate encounter with a long flight of stairs, but... gentler. Softer. Friendlier. And though Nathan himself could never be called gentle, soft, or friendly, he found that contrast intriguing in a woman. It might actually be relaxing to be with someone he didn't have to hate so brutally and bleakly all the time.

Being with Rebecca had been incredibly stressful, he realized, roughly equivalent to having his parents visit Mordhaus; every time he'd been around her, his stomach had clenched up and filled with bubbling acid. And that would make him belch at inopportune moments, like when she was showing off his Mordhaus fortune to her parents, or when they were at a fancy restaurant together, or when she dragged him to some horrendously sappy chick flick, or when she was finally allowing him to make love to her (once a month; he actually still had it marked on his calendar and had forgotten to scratch it out) and, for her foreplay, she was applying a switch to his ass or burning him with hot wax. And then, of course, she'd always laugh when he belched, which only ground the humiliation in deeper, which only made him feel _worse_, like he had to take a massively diarrhetic shit and there was no toilet for miles, and his only company was her, Rebecca Nightrod, with her nose hoisted in the air and her ice-blue eyes full of poison...

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, growling softly, fists clenching. Oh, how he hated her, hated the enslavement, hated the poisonous spell she'd put him under. She really had been like a drug. Sure, the first hit of her toned, perfect body had left him both aching with pain and begging for more, in the sense that it was the craziest, most uninhibited, most mind-blowingly wild sex he'd ever had. But then it'd tapered off, and tapered off quick. Rebecca hadn't liked him touching her -- in _any_ way -- without her permission. Nathan, of all people, had actually found himself wanting to hold her hand or put an arm around her at certain moments, when there was no one else around but the two of them, and the first time he'd tried to casually put his arm around her shoulders while they were watching a movie, with them just sitting together on the couch at Mordhaus, she'd shoved him away so hard and so suddenly that he'd toppled off the couch and hit the floor like a bag of bricks.

He'd just lay there and stared at her for a few moments, thinking numbly, _But I thought girls liked cuddling and all that shit!_ Rebecca had just stared down at him with eyes like ice, then reached into his bag of popcorn (hers was empty) and took some of the golden, fake-butter-slathered popcorn and tossed it into her perfect mouth. Then she had slowly smiled, her full, perfect lips curving in a wet, buttery smile that only made them look fuller and more perfect and more kissable. But he'd known then that if he did what he really wanted to do and kissed them, his mouth would soon find itself having an intimate encounter with her fist. And for a girl, she punched really damn hard, too.

Nathan dragged his thoughts back to the present with an almost physical effort, and now looked down at Angélique, who was staring, enraptured, at her new home. He studied the fading bruises on her gentle face with a new sympathy and understanding. He, too, had been terrorized by someone close to him. The fear that Rebecca had induced in him hadn't been the unsteady, agonizing fear of never knowing when the blow will fall, but the precise and cutting fear of knowing that it would, and knowing how hard it would be, and knowing that there was no way in the world to avoid it. Then there'd been the shame of having allowed himself to ever get in this situation in the first place, and the scrotum-shrinking terror of what would happen if he'd ever tried to call it off with Rebecca. Oh, he'd seen the look in her eyes sometimes, when he balked at doing what she wanted him to do when she wanted him to do it. _I can hurt you, motherfucker,_ that look said. _And I can hurt you worse than you've ever been hurt before. You think you know brutal? You don't know shit. Brutal's my middle fuckin' name, mister._ And always, he'd believed her... and hated himself for doing so.

"You're sweating," a soft voice said by his right armpit. A soft hand went up and down his forearm, making the hairs on it bristle. "And you're cold, too." A pause, then: "Are you..."

"Scared?" That was the word, but Nathan Explosion couldn't admit to that. Not him. "No," he lied, then amended it with, "Just rememberin' something that wasn't all that great. 'N fact, it was a pile of shit from start to finish." There, he'd said it. _Suck on that, Becky._ She'd _hated_ that nickname.

Angélique's grey eyes lowered. They were narrower than Rebecca's, paler and less brilliant. Soft, and gentle, and understanding, just a little. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. I'm sorry, too."

She turned fully and looked at him, _really_ looked at him, and he found himself shaken. This was very, very different from Rebecca, from the hateful hunger in her eyes that chewed up his soul into a little spitty wad and then upchucked it back out into the sink to go down the drain with the morning mouthwash; this was very, very different from some brain-dead, barely-legal fangirl with a Dethklok tattoo, twenty thousand piercings, and an "Explode Me!" baby-doll t-shirt. This was... well, _different_. And it scared him, frankly. It was like playing something by ear for the first time, whenever he stole one of Skwisgaar's guitars or Murderface's bass and started to plunk out a new song that only he could hear inside his head. It was like singing some new lyrics to himself into his PDA, trying to find the tune, the rhythm, the melody, trying to see if the lyrics rhymed or not, if they were crap or not. It was like his first-ever big show that they'd had as Dethklok, ever, when he'd walked out onto the stage and been stunned at the size and the volume of the crowd, how eager they were, how it seemed as though they were a force that would master him and not the other way around. His mouth was dry, his heart was in his throat, he was sweating and cold all over, and here he was, staring into the eyes of this battered, pretty, trusting, frightened young woman, and he was as scared as she was. Because this was different. And different was _brutal._

Brutally different, it seemed, was cupping her chin in one hand, and swearing in a very, very slow, very soft, very low voice that he wouldn't hurt her, would never hurt her. Brutally different was stroking her unbruised cheek, and leaning in for a very gentle, almost chaste kiss on that petal-delicate, injured mouth. Just a little... he could see the strawberry juice and syrup still clinging to it... maybe he'd just lick it off. Just gently, as if she was a musical instrument that didn't need a lot of stress on it to get what he needed out of it. Like one of Toki's old keyboards. Just a light touch...

Their lips were millimeters apart. Then:

"Yous kissing?" Toki's voice, sounding like he'd just caught his parents making out. _Toki?_ What the hell?

Nathan leaned back. So did Angélique. They both turned to see Toki, Pickles, and Murderface standing there crammed in the open doorway. Skwisgaar had pushed himself up into a sitting position on the floor and was grinning at them. "Oh, they's _kissing_," he said evilly. "They's abouts have a make-up sessions rights here and nows." He leaned back, bracing himself on his hands, and lifted his rump off the floor and wiggled his hips. Murderface snickered. Pickles covered his nose and made a very nasal sniggering noise. Toki just stared.

Nathan leaned back and waited until his heart stopped thumping so wildly. "When we get back inside the house, you and me are gonna have some words," he said, staring at them. When he turned, Angélique had gotten up, and was straightening her makeshift outfit and trying not to look embarrassed, and the moment was _gone_. Destroyed. Annihilated. Shot to the depths of Hell where it was incinerated instantly, leaving behind only a little smear of ash in his mouth to remind him it had once existed in space and time. The disappointment this produced was epic. The resulting irritation was even more epic.

"Nathan," Toki said, looking justifiably terrified, "we's lookings for you... we gonna get off the 'copter and go inside and we were wondering where you were so please don't kill me Nathans, please..." He tried to back up but Pickles and Murderface were in his way and were clearly ready to throw him to Nathan's wrath as a human sacrifice, should matters come down to it.

Ofdensen, who always seemed to have a talent for sniffing out violence or discord within the band, suddenly appeared and shouldered his way past Murderface and Pickles, grabbed Toki by the shoulders, and steered him out of the danger zone, back behind the comforting shield of Ofdensen's own body. The other members of Dethklok, grateful for the timely intervention, all got the hell out of there as fast as they could.

"Nathan," Ofdensen said in his clipped, precise, slightly nasal voice, "it's time to go. We've been looking for you." He surveyed Angélique dispassionately. "Unless you want to spend the day on the Dethcopter. . ."

"No, no, I'm going," Nathan growled, heaving himself up off the couch.

"Miss Eluveitie, come with me, please," Ofdensen said. "I'll find you a room and some suitable clothing. Angélique gave Nathan a helpless look as Ofdensen led her away.

Alone, Nathan sat there for a moment, fuming. "Those slimy, scum-sucking, cowardly, cockblocking asshole _dicks_," he finally spat. "I'll fuckin' _kill_ them."

Suddenly, as if on cue, ideas for new songs started popping into his head -- _Cockblocker Killfest, Flesh-melted Fuck-Face, Blood Boiling_ -- one after the other, almost too many to count. It was as if his imagination was feeding on his rage and lust and love and sexual frustration, and was shrieking for more even as it stuffed all those toxic, roiling emotions down into its slavering, fang-lined maw.

"_Brutal_," he grunted, promptly ripped his PDA off his belt, and started taking notes.

_**The End.**_


End file.
